Download Antigone: Greek Audience

Antigone: Greek Audience
• The Greek audience would have been
familiar with the story and the characters.
• An understanding of Antigone’s family
and her father’s fate helps to put the
events of the play in context.
• Sophocles would have only used three
actors in the original production (a Greek
drama competition regulation).
The Oedipus Myth
• Oedipus was born of Jocasta and Laius
(the rulers of Thebes), a great but starcrossed family.
• Prophecy warns that the boy would grow
up to murder his father and marry his
mother.
• See handout.
Antigone Summary
• In the battle for the throne of Thebes,
Antigone’s brothers Eteocles and
Polyneices fight for and against the city.
• Creon, king of Thebes, gives Eteocles a
soldier’s funeral, but decrees that
Polyneices’ body remain unburied.
• Antigone defies the decree, without
Ismene's help, and buries the body.
Summary continued
• After a sentry rats out Antigone, Creon
then condemns both Antigone and
Ismene to death.
• He later changes his mind about Ismene,
and locks Antigone away in a stone
vault.
• Haemon, Creon’s son, who is in love
with Antigone, pleads with his father to
do the right move, but Creon ignores this
plea.
Summary continued
• The blind prophet Tiresias then proves that
“the gods” are on Antigone’s side, and he
warns Creon of his immoral actions.
• Creon then changes his tune, but upon going
to actually bury Polyneices himself, Haemon
attacks him and then kills himself.
• When the news of this spreads, Creon’s wife,
Eurydice, kills herself, and Creon is left
utterly alone at the end of the play.
Conflicts in Antigone
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•
•
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Man versus Man
Man versus the environment
Man versus the supernatural
Man versus himself.
Issues in Antigone
• Families torn apart by political
differences,
• Overall family dysfunction,
• Gender bias,
• The death penalty,
• Suicide,
• Fate.